Wireless communications have become increasingly prominent for sending and receiving information. For example, individuals may utilize a wireless communication device for voice communications, research, entertainment, or for conducting critical business transactions. Some of these services require the location of the wireless communication device in order to operate, which is often obtained via the Global Positioning System (GPS). In order for a wireless device to determine its geographic location using GPS, it typically must search for and acquire signals from GPS elements, such as satellites. This process can be time consuming.
To reduce the amount of time required for the wireless communication device to acquire its location, many modern wireless communication networks typically provide a network-assisted GPS capability. Assisted GPS (A-GPS) allows the network to aid the wireless device in determining the device's geographic location. By utilizing a position determining entity (PDE), A-GPS provides orbital data or ephemeris for the GPS satellites to the GPS receiver in the wireless device, enabling the GPS receiver to lock on to the satellites more rapidly in some cases. Thus, A-GPS obviates the need for the wireless communication device to search for the GPS elements itself.
Typically, a wireless communication provider must purchase PDE session licenses to ensure PDE requests from a wireless communication device are processed by the PDE. If all PDE session licenses are consumed, new requests to the PDE are queued and potentially expire if no session licenses become available in a specified period of time. Unfortunately, if a pending PDE request is rejected due to a lack of PDE session licenses, the service that required the PDE request could fail to execute, thereby impacting the user of the wireless communication device.